I do…NOT want 2 marry U
The text arrives the next morning, waking me with its ruthless bling. I grab my iPhone and stare at the message on the screen. It’s from Nathan.
I can’t abide liars. Therefore, I must insist on a termination of our impending contractual relationship.
Heart racing, I quickly tap out my response.
I love u Nathan. Won’t u pls let me explain?
I hold my breath and wait for his response.
No. My trust in you is irreparably ruptured. It is over, Vivia. Goodbye and good luck.
I let out a strangled cry.
Fanny comes rushing into the room, carrying two steaming paper cups with the Teavana logo on them. She has slipped out to bring me my favorite Samurai Chai Maté. Fanny hates tea. She deposits the tea on a box and comes to sit beside me.
“What is it, Vivian? Did you hear from Nathan?”
I nod, and tears spill down my cheeks.
“What did he say?”
I hand her the phone. Fanny reads Nathan’s text and her lips press together to form a sharp slash across her face. It’s her angry look.
“Bâtard!” Fanny directs a barrage of French oaths at the iPhone before switching to English. “He speaks of your engagement as if he were negotiating one of his mergers. What sort of man ends an engagement through a text? Was he born without a heart?”
I shrug because I can’t think of a response. It’s as if someone has jammed a needle into my brain and injected it with Novocain.
“I’ll tell you what sort of man,” Fanny snaps, punctuating her words with sharp jabs and wild waves of her manicured hands. “A sanctimonious mouth-breathing cave dweller who is more concerned about what the other knuckle-draggers will think of him than your feelings!”
I scoot to a sitting position and stare at my best friend through my thick tousled bangs. Her outburst stuns me, not because she is immune to such displays of violent emotion—quite the contrary—but because she has never expressed a negative opinion about Nathan.
“Je suis desolée, Vivian.” Fanny draws a deep breath and exhales. “But this is typical of Nathaniel Edwards III, is it not?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, ma chérie”—Fanny ducks her head until she catches my gaze behind my bangs—“Nathan cares only for himself.”
“That’s not true!”
“Be honest, Vivian! Think of all the times he disregarded your feelings, your wants, because they did not fit neatly into his agenda.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Really?” Fanny pushes up her sleeves.“Don’t you remember the night you met Nathan at Snob to plan your honeymoon?”
I arrived with a stack of glossy travel brochures of the art capitals of Europe. Paris. London. Rome. Vienna. I bounced through the bar, as buoyant as Kate Upton’s boobs. Nathan listened, nodded, and then went out the next day and booked a bike and wine tour through Provence and Tuscany. A rigorous bike tour. Not like the time Fanny and I visited her Grandma in Normandy and rode pink Schwinns to a café for hot chocolate and croissants.
I throw back the covers and bring my knees up under my chin. Nathan’s expensive musky cologne floats around me, a ghostly reminder of his absence. I am ashamed for thinking of the man I love in less than charitable terms.
“Okay, so he booked a honeymoon that catered to his interests instead of mine, but that doesn’t make him a selfish son-of-a-bitch. Does it? A honeymoon in Europe is still a honeymoon in Europe. Did it really matter if we filled our days cruising on the Seine or biking through the French countryside?”
Fanny stands and walks to where she deposited our tea, grabs a cup, and holds it out to me like a peace offering.
“I am sorry, Vivian. I should not have jogged off at the mouth like that.”
“Run.”
“What?”
“Run off at the mouth, not jogged.”
The spicy scent of chai teases my nostrils, and I take a sip of my tea.
“Run, jog. It does not matter.” Fanny takes a sip of her tea and shudders. “I shouldn’t have said those things about Nathan. Not yet. It’s too soon.”
I get out of bed and pad into the kitchen, rummaging around in the cabinets until I find an old box of Border’s Strawberries and Cream Shortbread Biscuits courtesy of my mum. Fanny follows me into the kitchen and I offer her a cookie. She shakes her head. Normally, I would take Fanny’s refusal to indulge as a cue to resist the temptation of the evil glutinous goody, but not this morning. I am basically sticking a tub of butter in my mouth and I don’t care. They taste good. Besides, what does it matter if I blow up like Violet Beauregarde, the bratty gumball thief in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? I’ve been jilted, practically left standing at the altar. I might as well buy a herd of cats, don the flannel pajamas, and call myself Perpetual Spinster.
If I could have a quart of Haagan Dazs White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle administered to my veins via IV, I swear I would do it.
I polish off two more cookies, take a seat on one of my kitchen chairs, and drop my forehead to the table.
“What am I going to do, Fanny? My life is over.”
“Nonsense!” Fanny says. “Your life is not over.”
“It feels like it is.”
Fanny rests her hand on my shoulder. “Of course it does, ma chérie. Your heart has been broken. Your dreams have died. You are in mourning.”
Queen Victoria mourned the death of her husband for forty years. She dressed in black and cultivated a talent for taxidermy. Will I mourn the loss of Nathan for that long? God, I hope not. Dead animals really creep me out, even if they are stuffed and confined to glass domes.
“These feelings will not last forever, though,” Fanny says, reading my thoughts. “You will forget all about Nathan.”
With effort, I raise my head and look up at my dear friend. “How?”
“Do what French women do.”
“What’s that?”
“Replace him with a new lover.”
Fanny never refers to men as boyfriends, only lovers. It’s so cosmopolitan.
“Ugh.” I groan, imagining myself sitting at some pathetic speed date making small talk with a stranger. “I don’t have the stamina for all of that. My heart is broken.”
“Not now, but you will. Maybe you might consider revisiting someone from your past?”
“It’s not like I have many to choose from.”
“Think, Vivian,” Fanny urged. “What about that SCUBA instructor, the South African with the hazel eyes?”
“He only wanted to go down.”
“How is this a problem?”
I laugh through my tears. “He only wanted to SCUBA dive. It’s all he ever talked about.”
“What about that boy you had a crush on in high school?”
“Jason Thomas?”
Fanny nods.
“I saw him a few months ago at a function in Napa.”
“And?”
“I grossly miscalculated the trajectory of his hotness. He was fat, had three chins, and no neck. And he was bald. He looked like a giant toe.”
“Been there, done that. Remember Sean the midget?” Fanny shuddered. “We met for drinks a few months ago.”
“What? You didn’t tell me.”
Fanny shrugged. “What’s to tell? The munchkin had not grown—in size or personality. I spent the evening imagining him skipping down a yellow brick lane and wondering how I could have ever been attracted to him.”
I want to remind Fanny that at five feet tall sans Louboutins, she could easily take her place on that yellow brick road, but humor seems somehow sacrilegious. I am, after all, in mourning.
“I guess Travis Trunnell is out of the question?”
I fix her with my most munchkin-withering stare.
“You are right; sometimes it is best if one leaves the past in the past.”
“It’s useless. I am destined for spinsterhood.”
“Don’t be absurd! You’re beautiful, smart, and ridiculously funny. You’re going to meet another man.”
“Maybe I could learn to knit.”
Fanny laughs. I wish I could adopt her laissez faire attitude about love and loss, but it’s probably genetically impossible. After all, the French have been perfecting the talent for years. Look at Napoleon. He found a replacement for Josephine before her spot in his imperial bed had grown cold.
The doorbell buzzes. Fanny walks to the door and looks through the peephole.
“How odd,” she says. “It is a bike messenger. Leave it to me, chérie. I will deal with it.”
Fanny opens the door and steps into the hallway.
My head suddenly feels too heavy for my neck so I rest my forehead on my kitchen table again. A memory flashes in my brain of the day Nathan surprised me with the table. We’d been puttering around Napa Valley when we found a small furniture store filled with custom wood pieces. I saw the sleek table made of reclaimed wine barrels, stained a milky French gray, and I had to have it.
Nathan had said, “Vivia, it’s hideous. Besides, you don’t know a thing about wine.”
“I don’t need to be a sommelier to appreciate a unique piece of art,” I argued.
A few days later, I opened my door to find two delivery men hoisting the table up the stairs. Nathan was behind them, a dozen roses in hand. My throat clogs with emotion. Nathan purchased the table as an investment in our future—a future that will never happen. There will be no Thanksgiving dinners, no Easter brunches, no sitting around the table reading the Sunday paper, and sipping tea.
“Look what I have!”
I lift my head in time to see Fanny striding into my kitchen, triumphantly carrying a large envelope like an Olympic torch.
“Guess what I have in my hands?”
“A scarlet letter branding me a lying whore?”
“Pfft.” Fanny waves her hand dismissively. “You are not a whore, Vivian. You are a normal woman with a disproportionately large guilty conscious. I love your Maman, but she filled your head with a load of merde about sex.”
“I don’t know…”
“I do!” Fanny smiles. “Now, don’t you want to know what is in this envelope?”
“Not really.”
“Vivian!”
“Fine,” I say, even though I want to climb back into bed, pull the covers over my head, and forget the last twenty four hours ever happened. “What is it?”
Fanny sits in the chair opposite me and slides the envelope across the table with one manicured fingernail. “The itinerary, vouchers, and tickets for your honeymoon.”